My vegan, type 1 pregnancy: Trimester One

As I sit here in my third trimester, writing about my first trimester of pregnancy, it feels so long ago.

We had moved into our new home on January 1, 2020. We did this ourselves, and it was relatively easy, yet exhausting trying to get it done before we both went back to work a couple of days later.

I was starting a new job in Santa Monica and was excited for the year ahead.

Little did I know what was waiting for us as a family in 2020.

January 12 came and I hadn’t been closely tracking my period but knew it was late. I casually took a pregnancy test, I had a feeling I was pregnant and yes, it came back positive!

In Cairns, Great Barrier Reef, Australia - around the time we think we got pregnant.

I ran to the bed, excited and nervous to share the news with Alex.

We had a miscarriage the year before during August. It was early on in the pregnancy and I was aware this was common. It was heartbreaking but I was also okay with it. Knew it was a natural part of going through pregnancy for a lot of women and didn’t let it deter us from continuing to try.

The early morning excitement when we found out.

We were using a cycle app called Natural Cycles to track my fertility, but followed this more flippantly after the miscarriage to try and let nature do its thing, and it worked.

Counting back from January 12, it looks like we got pregnant in Cairns, Australia on our trip over Christmas. An Australian baby!

I had also noticed my blood glucose levels (BGLs) running higher than usual overnight since we had gotten back to California – something unusual for me.

A type 1 friend who recently had a baby had let me know about this prior to getting pregnant, so I saw the sign as a frustrating but good thing.

Some overnight BGLs before I knew I was pregnant.

I really had no idea about what would entail throughout my pregnancy apart from what I had read and heard from friends and family about their personal experiences with pregnancy. A lot sounded to be pretty horrible with morning sickness, exhaustion and feeling extremely uncomfortable.

I was hoping that my healthy eating habits and exercise would make me immune to pregnancy symptoms – I had high hopes! Ha.

I was mostly concerned about my diabetes management during pregnancy. I had read and heard that it could be very challenging to maintain good control during pregnancy due to the range of hormones running through the pregnant body.

I knew good diabetes management was essential for a healthy pregnancy and baby – so I didn’t take this with a grain of salt and knew I had to get my management dialed in even more than I was currently doing. I strived for perfection. I wanted the same amount of risk as a healthy woman with no diabetes or health issues.

My pregnancy started out with excitement, keeping it a secret was hard. I told a few close friends before 12 weeks just so I had someone to talk to and ask questions while we waited to share with family at 12 weeks and our larger group of friends at 16 weeks.

Our announcement to close family and friends.

I felt bloated the first trimester, really felt like my stomach was growing at a rapid rate – looking back at photos I can laugh, because my stomach was so small.

The nausea hit me worst at night. Right around the time I would be ready to leave work and drive on the windy road home.

Thankfully I never threw up, but sometimes I wanted to so badly as I thought it would help reduce the nausea.

My level of exhaustion in the first trimester is what really took me by surprise. I am not sure if it was a combination of being pregnant, getting used to long commutes to and from work and settling into our new house, but I’d come home and want to go to bed at 7pm. I’d be completely useless for the evening. Just wanting to eat, rest and sleep.

I’d still get up in the morning to go for a run with our husky Yuki – thankfully I had enough energy to continue to run and get in some regular exercise.

During the first trimester, I kept my runs at a normal training distance. 3-5 miles most days during the week and longer trail runs on the weekends with Alex. My pace started to slow down slightly but the 2ndand 3rdtrimesters really slowed down.

I was still logging 30-mile weeks during the first trimester. I think my longest run was 16 miles.

I felt good and knew the exercise would help me and the baby through the pregnancy. And of course, continue to keep my BGLs in a tight range.

A run in Malibu Creek State Park where I was hot, tired and felt very pregnant. Less than 12 weeks at the time.

I also started reading some books on vegan pregnancy and one on type 1 diabetes and pregnancy by Ginger Vieira and Jennifer H. Smith (highly recommended if you have type 1 diabetes and are/looking to get pregnant). It was helpful to read what lay ahead along with the experience of another type 1 mama-to-be.

I experienced some of the BGL patterns she experienced but also didn’t experience many.

I had a lot of low BGLs during my first trimester and ate a lot. Most of my weight gain was in the first trimester.

I didn’t have a lot of cravings (don’t ask Alex about his!) – black beans, tortilla chips and dark chocolate where the height of my cravings. I stopped eating black beans after having trapped gas a couple of times – it feels like someone is stabbing a knife in your lower abdomen. Excruciating sharp pain until it goes away.

We ate as usual. I still loved and still love spicy foods. There was no holding back there. I was eating salads, brown rice, tofu and veggie dishes and the usual oatmeal or breakfast smoothies to start my day. I felt like I wasn’t doing much different to keep my BGLs in range.

I was still eating all the carbs. My concern was about what I was going to eat later in my pregnancy as insulin resistance was most likely to increase. I was enjoying about 200-300g of carbs a day, taking full advantage of the insulin sensitivity.

My A1c at the start of my pregnancy was 5.4% and my first follow up visit I was down to 5.0%. Not completely from perfect control, as there were a lot of low BGLs I was managing, but I had really limited a BGL over 130. That was a top priority for me.

Right around the time I told my boss I was pregnant (~12 weeks), COVID-19 hit the US and our office went into immediate work from home mode.

I was sent home first because I was pregnant and the rest of the office was sent home the following day.

Although I could write a whole post on being pregnant during a pandemic, it honestly was a blessing for me from a work perspective. Being able to work from home gave me more flexibility and control in managing my diabetes. I wasn’t trapped in long meetings, could move around and do squats while on conference calls and didn’t have to do the long commutes to the office.

Alex and I really began social distancing around April. There was even a time where Alex and I were sleeping in separate beds/rooms as he was working at the hospital and we didn’t know the risk of exposure to him while everything was so new. I definitely did not (and still don’t) want to get COVID – being pregnant and having type 1 diabetes.

Alex made it to three ultrasound scans – 8, 12 & 16 weeks before the hospital restricted appointments to no visitors. Our doctor is a high-risk OB at UCLA.

Type 1 diabetes comes with the tag of high-risk pregnancy. Uncontrolled BGLs can increase your risk for pre-eclampsia, high BP, larger babies and at the end of the pregnancy placenta failure and stillborn births.

My BGL control put me at low risk for all of these. I was doing my best to view my pregnancy as a low-risk normal pregnancy, just with the add on of extremely tight BGL monitoring and management.

The 2nd trimester was completely different to the first in many ways.

I’ll talk about it all in my next post.

I thought my belly was so big in this photo! Haha